Let’s consider of a few figures in popular music, namely Louis Armstrong, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Willie Nelson. (This is the handful I could come up with off the top of my head, I imagine the list could grow quite long) All of these individuals are, or have spent substantial periods of their lives as, regular marijuana users.

Now I’m interested in hearing anyone make the case that any of these individuals would fit into the category of “unproductive.” On the contrary, each is recognized as being one the most prolific musicians of our time, the creators of entire genres of music, and having made important contributions to 20th century thought and culture. And these accomplishments all happened during periods of regular marijuana use. (As you might guess, I wasn’t there when Dylan wrote “like a Rolling Stone” or when Lennon wrote “Imagine,” but I’d say it’s a good guess some of this stuff happened while they were stoned.)

As a working musician and song-writer myself, and a person who occasionally, and sometimes a little more than occasionally, smokes pot and hash, I understand that the state of mind one attains through these substances does have the tendency to enhance creativity, and in turn creative productivity. The conservative anti-drug crowd may refuse to accept that anything good could come from “drugs,” yet, in addition to my own first-hand experience, I appeal to the above evidence. I can imagine what it would be like for someone who is stoned and trying to do an IQ test who becomes bored and frustrated with such meaningless and shallow mental gymnastics and is subsequently distracted with the desire to write poetry.

“This “infomania study” has been the bane of my life. I was hired by H-P for one day to advise on a PR project and had no anticipation of the extent to which it (and my responsibility for it) would get over-hyped in the media.

There were two parts to their “research” (1) a Gallup-type survey of around 1000 people who admitted mis-using their technology in various ways (e.g. answering e-mails and phone calls while in meetings with other people), and (2) a small in-house experiment with 8 subjects (within-S design) showing that their problem solving ability (on matrices type problems) was seriously impaired by incoming e-mails (flashing on their computer screen) and their own mobile phone ringing intermittently (both of which they were instructed to ignore) by comparison with a quiet control condition. This, as you say, is a temporary distraction effect – not a permanent loss of IQ. The equivalences with smoking pot and losing sleep were made by others, against my counsel, and 8 Ss somehow became “80 clinical trials”.

Since then, I’ve been asked these same questions about 20 times per day and it is driving me bonkers.”

Google is your friend, if you let it…